Page 1 of Striking Out In The Mountains

CHAPTER ONE

Graham

“What the hell, Doug?” I say, throwing my hands up. “Beer already?”

Doug shrugs as he cracks open a can of beer. “I’m thirsty.”

“It’s eleven AM.”

“Exactly,” he says with a grin as he sucks up the foam leaking out. “It’s my pre-lunch beer.”

“Not to be confused with his pre-pre-lunch beer, or his lunch beer, or his post-lunch beer,” Mason says, shaking his head.

“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But just one before the game starts.”

He turns around to get his baseball glove and I see another one in his back pocket, making his pants sag down.

“I need everyone’s hand-eye coordination to be on point,” I say to my team of softball players. “I’m not losing to these cocksuckers again.”

Every summer in the Greene Mountains, we have a charity softball game that gets pretty intense. It’s the firehouse—and whoever we can pick up to join us—versus the Sheriff station—and any extra bodies they can grab. It’s supposed to be friendly, but it gets fiercely competitive.

“We got this, Chief,” Lincoln says, swinging a couple of baseball bats.

“Yeah, we got the Search and Rescue guys on our team,” Ethan says as he pounds his fist into his mitt. “Aiden hitfourhome runs last year.”

“I’m going to need everyone hitting home runs this year,” I say as I look at the cops throwing the ball around. It looks like they’ve been practicing…

“Where is Aiden anyway?” I ask, feeling my heart rate starting to jack up. I really want to kick the Sheriff’s smug ass this year. I grew up with Ryland Gray and we’ve always been competitive with each other. It started when we competed for the starting quarterback position in high school and it hasn’t stopped. We probably should have let that shit go by now considering we’re both fifty-two—a long way from our teenage years—but it’s all in good fun. Mostly.

“There they are, Chief,” James says, pointing his tattooed arm at left field. I take a deep breath when I see Aiden, Colin, and Julian walking over wearing the yellow shirts we ordered for the game. The Flame Throwers is written across their chests in black font.

Our firehouse pug Bubba starts wagging his tail and yapping on the bench when he sees the famous bloodhound Charlie walking with them.

“Thanks for joining us, guys,” I say, meeting them by third base. We shake hands and I instantly feel a little better with some more muscle on our team.

“Kylee is going to play too,” Aiden says. “I hope you don’t mind. I ordered her a shirt.”

My stomach drops. “Kylee?”

She comes jogging over, wearing a Flame Thrower shirt and a glove on her hand. Is that girl even a hundred pounds? How is she going to help us win?

Aiden chuckles when he sees my face. “We can play for the cops if you prefer…”

“No, no!” I quickly say.

“They’ve been harassing us to join them,” Julian says with a laugh. “I was worried I was going to get arrested when we said no.”

“It’s all good, Chief,” Aiden says, smacking my arm with a laugh. “She was a professional athlete.”

“What sport?” I ask with a gulp.

“Gymnastics,” he says as he continues to the bench.

“I went to the Olympics too,” Kylee says as she runs past me with a grin.

Let’s hope she can catch as well as she can do a cartwheel.

We get our team set up on the bench and the boys start throwing the ball around, warming up. The stands begin filling up with people from around town.

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